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I’ve tried to keep the discussion rooted to what marketers need to know about IoT. It’s easy to get carried away talking about fridges that know when you’ve run out of milk but realistically there’s no demand for that. It won’t be happening any time soon.

But what will be happening is the gradual transition from one-off purchases where the customer is never to be seen again. This will transition to services, where a customer’s purchase ‘talks’ to the store or manufacturer and a relationship is established throughout the product lifecycle.

Whether it be refills, repairs or upgrades, the seller can keep in touch to potentially make you a more loyal and valuable customer.

Additionally, customers will be able to demand accuracy and transparency from many service providers, as internet enabled devices afford greater data analysis, or life-logging. Cost-saving could be a major benefit, for consumers and suppliers.

So what are these emerging products Andrew has spotted?

ADT Pulse for home automation

The connected home is a big part of the IoT we’re all eagerly anticipating (for good or bad).

ADT Pulse is home automation that focuses mainly on security such as locking and unlocking doors, arming alarm systems and receiving security alerts.

It also allows for lighting and thermostat control if fully installed and starts at around $60-$80 per month.

Products include motion sensors, door and window sensors and a central panel that runs off a tablet.

Hive Active Heating

I’ve started seeing posters advertising Hive on the Underground. It’s here and it helps customers reduce costs by allowing heating control via smartphone.

British Gas is advertising projected savings of £150 a year for customers who install Hive. This page provides a handy list of everything the customer will need for installation, including broadband and a mobile and up to date web browser.

It costs £199 and British Gas has also launched a sub-brand called Mobile Energy.

The ME app allows you to check your bill and split it with housemates, among other things.

DrivePlus from Direct Line

DrivePlus is one example of a telematics service, offered by Direct Line.

Telematics is used to gauge how a customer drives and allows the insurer to tailor its prices depending on how safe you are.

One in five new Direct Line motor policies with drivers aged under 25 now includes telematics according to the Direct Line website.

Recommended

The pinboard-style website is on the rise, aspiring to become the visual search engine of the internet.

With the novel arrival of the newest batch of pins that this social media channel has recently created for today’s modern digital consumers, will it be taking retailers by storm, or just bring a drizzle of rain into the world of ecommerce?

If you run a small business, or are looking to make the leap from Etsy or eBay into your own domain, you could do a lot worse then looking at one of the following templates.

As a caveat, I haven’t used any of these in their proper working forms, I’ve just played around with the demo versions, checking for customisability and whether the sites really do offer true responsiveness.

It would be worth doing your own investigation on each one before committing to buy. If you click on the images below, you will be taken through to the demo versions where you can check out the product, look at the custom options and of course the price of the product yourself.

Templates are available from many different vendors and the bulk of these are from independent designers, but first I’ll take a look at the best designs available from Shopify.

With multiple facets to optimise for higher conversions, ecommerce brands often treat on-site search as an afterthought. As a result, 72% of desktop ecommerce search engines cannot return relevant results for queries containing synonyms, misspelt words or searches using a model number. By failing to address the search experience, you are losing customers, especially when […]